Ruth Hill is a professor of Spanish and Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University.

Richly detailed, amply documented, and wholly original, this book looks at eighteenth-century Spanish America through the dual prism of literature and history. The real focus, though, is race and class in the Spanish colonies . . . the entire field is richer and more interesting because of [Hill's] efforts.--The Virginia Quarterly Review

• IntroductionPart IChapter 1 | Mexico City versus Lima: Pila, Puente, Pan, and PeinesChapter 2 | Defacing a Bourbon Legend: Pedro, Pardo, Paulino, and PeruleroPart IIChapter 3 | En Route and in the Loop: Trade, Metals, and Elites, circa 1700–1750Chapter 4 | Of Gods and Men: Bourbon Blindness and the Post, circa 1750–1800Part IIIChapter 5 | Before Race: Hierarchy in Bourbon Spanish AmericaChapter 6 | The Inca Impostor Unmasked: Culture, Controversy, and ConcolorcorvoChapter 7 | Trial of the Century: Humor, Rhetoric, and the LawEpilogueNotesBibliographyIndex